ecoculture, geophilosophy, mediapolitics

more Lessig, Kelly, socialism

Now that I’ve taken the time to read the growing list of responses to Lessig’s post, I have to say that I’m much more impressed with the collective hive mind — the network of respondents he’s grown around himself — than with the Queen Bee (Lessig himself) on this matter. (That metaphor is not very rhizomic, I know.) Several respondents play variations on the same themes I argued in my post yesterday, i.e. that Lessig’s use of the word “socialism” is inaccurate, somewhat irresponsible, a little alarmist, and very ethnocentric. Lessig writes in reply that

“We all need to recognize (speaking now to the cross cultural crowd) that different political systems internalize the concepts differently. So I am criticizing an American writing in an American publication about his use of a term — ‘socialism.’ I don’t pretend to understand how well the use fits other cultures, or traditions. I am speaking to one of my own about my own tradition.”

To which Kelly replies that he’s not writing as an American but is “at this point half Chinese, and, as much as possible, a citizen of the world.” He could have added that Wired magazine is read all over the world, especially on-line, and that Lessig is, too. To his credit, Kelly sticks to his guns.

An interesting side-discussion seems to be emerging from Kelly’s challenge to “Give me a better word to describe the type of governance that is emerging”, with the issue being whether what is emerging from Wikipedia, etc., qualifies as governance at all. Of course it isn’t, but it could be considered part of a larger, more diffuse network of governance mechanisms that are evolving in fits and starts at every scale from the local to the national to the global, from peer pressure and the institutionalization of accepted practice to enforceable regulations. These are neither purely capitalist nor purely socialist. They, ideally, should have something to do with nested systems of collective monitoring and adaptive governance, with mixtures of rights and obligations, checks and balances, individual and collective forms of behavior, etc. And if there isn’t an accepted word to describe them, Kevin Kelly’s attempt to test at least one of them (socialism) for its appropriateness seems laudable. At the very least, it’s nice to see this discussion happening in a public forum where political philosophers aren’t huddled together in their own, mutually exclusive camps.

One Response

I haven’t read the discussion, but the thought certainly came up in your own description of the topic that the word “socialism” is something of an abuse, or at least rhetorical move here. It allows one to impress that somehow Real socialism has finally arrived, through the back door so to speak.

Simply because there is not a better word does not mean that one gets to use an old word seriously imbued with a history and purpose. (And I say this with no anti-socialist bent.) One can call the automobile at its invention a kind of “horse” but it really isn’t. That is to say, calling it a horse might very well reveal some laudable or practical advantages of this kind of horse over the old kind, but it also would seriously occlude what is happening here, the kind of transformation taking place.

Further, or perhaps most importantly, the notion that “the public owns” something in open source exchanges in your description is an obscurance of just who and what has rights over others. For instance the Open Source Liscencing Agreement was a pivotal document in the Linux OS distribution, making ownership have a very specific form, allowing Capitalized enterprise upon participation of ownership. I’m not sure if this means the same thing as “the public owns” the means of production. To call this socialism is to obscure what is precisely capitalized about it.One just as easily could say that Open Source distributions are radical Capitalism and give us another ideological skew. In fact, this seems like a better description, for “the public” per se, doesn’t seem to own anything in the traditional socialist sense.

I hope that I have not missed some very important points having not the time to enter into the actual discussion. I am just responding to your eariler take on things, and your summation above.